White, Adrian Interview

Hello, today is Saturday 4th May 2024. I am privileged to be speaking to Adrian White at his lovely home in Pukehou. My name is Meghan Batey. Shall we begin, Adrian? Can you please tell me about your early life in Hawke’s Bay and how your family come [came] to settle in Hawke’s Bay?

Well my grandfather, [William Kinross White], arrived in Napier in the 1890s from Glasgow, and he came to inherit a large fortune from his uncle, Lord Kinross. When the ship was on the way he didn’t realise that Lord Kinross lost all his fortune when the Glasgow Bank collapsed; Lord Kinross put all his money in to try and save the bank and lost it all.

So Grandfather came out here with nothing, and he began to build his own business which was quite substantial by the time he’d retired. He had a coastal lighter service with four small ships taking produce out to ships that were anchored off the harbour; he built the North British Freezing Works, and he had the London & Lancashire Insurance Company depot in Napier. He also had bought a farm at Taradale where he built a large house, and he bought another farm at Pukehou which our family’ve been living on ever since. He was a man with tremendous drive, but he went his own way.

At the Napier earthquake he had a large building – he used to employ retired bank managers as clerks – but he also had a small lot of young female secretaries. When the earthquake struck the old men went over to the hat stand and picked up their umbrella[s] and their bowler hat[s] and walked to the door, but the girls ran for the door at the first big shocks … ran outside, and the building collapsed and killed them. The old men were sitting under the door jamb which was safe. So Grandfather then had the first building rebuilt; he didn’t bother about permits or anything, he just went ahead and built it, and had terrible battles with the Napier Council. But he got the building up and it’s now the building where all the tourists come. It was named ‘Kinross White’ on the top, but that’s been taken down.

Kate (daughter): Art Deco.

Adrian: Art Deco building; and it’s now being used hugely for tourism and [there’s] a big shop in there. My cousin and I were offered a job there when we were in our eighties as ‘revived relics’ [chuckle] to greet the tourists. I remember we [paper rustling] drove up to a vantage point on the Napier hill to look down at this big port with a cruise ship coming in, and we rushed down to the hotel on the waterfront … what’s it ..?

Not the new one, Pania?

No, not the Pania, the one that’s right opposite the waterfront.

Masonic?

Masonic – Masonic Hotel; and we went in there to grab a cup of tea before we went to work greeting tourists and telling them about our association with the building. And there was nobody in there and there was no tourists got off at all, because they’d had a storm the night before and all the tourists were feeling unwell and they didn’t bother to get out [chuckle] … which was a big loss for Hastings. [?Hawke’s Bay?] So that was our big effort at employment at a great age, ‘cause we were dressed up in boaters and a striped jacket for the 1920s style. But that was just a little anecdote of my relationship with the building.

I was born in the Omarunui mansion, it was – a big two storeyed house in Omarunui Road, Taradale. My mother [Rona, née Elworthy] had a midwife, and the family were gathered in a sitting room, all drinking whisky – my grandfather was a great whisky drinker – waiting for the birth. But my grandfather came to my mother’s bedside and said to her, “Woman, you’re not to have that child ‘til after midnight!” Because that was his birthday, April 22nd and April 21st; so he went over and entertained his family with whisky. And at about ten o’clock there was a cacophony, and my grandfather said, “Damned women! Child’s arrived – they won’t do a thing you say these days – don’t know what the world’s coming to.” And it turned out that it wasn’t me; it was a couple of wild cats fighting on the lawn, so he ordered my father [Patrick (Paddy)] to go out and shoo them off. And then at eleven o’clock there was another cacophony, and it was me this time; Grandfather stormed off to bed in a [an] ill humour. But it was the same month that their eldest son was killed in a flying accident; he was in the Royal Air Force at age nineteen … Adrian Kinross White, who you say is recorded somewhere?

He’s in the Knowledge Bank, yes.

And he and my granny [Sarah, née Allen] were deeply upset of course. But she rather looked on me as the reincarnation of her son; she was Irish, and [a] bit sort of ‘away with the fairies’. I celebrated my birthday with my grandfather until I was about seven, and I remember one birthday Grandfather had a huge cake with eighty candles, and I had a little cake with five candles, or six, and Granny would light all the candles. She’d light mine and I’d go “poof” and blow them all out, but Grandfather was getting short of breath and he’d have about four goes to blow them out. He’d fall over in his chair and Grandmother would pick him up and set them alight again.

But each birthday I got a relic from my uncle’s estate. I got his wristwatch which he had on when he was killed; [it] was taken off and fixed up and sent back. I’ve still got the watch – it was a Rolex. Then I got his log book and his writing case each birthday. And people said that it was a bad way to treat a child, that you’re trying to live your life as [if] he is a reincarnation of your son.

I used to go there a lot and stay, and it was a big spooky old house. I wasn’t very happy there, but I was the favoured son; I was going to be called Peter but they said, “No, he must be called Adrian”, who [which] was my uncle’s name. And so I got this thing … I was always very keen on aeroplanes and I had this idea in my mind that on the day of his death I was going to take my plane up. He was the youngest pilot to get his licence at age fifteen … to get his A Licence at the Bridge Pa aerodrome, and he flew a Fox Moth around the country. He was a very well known pilot, and for years there was a big portrait of him in the clubhouse; he was very well known.

My cousin, who was also born in the same bed as me … my cousin Peter Holden … his mother [Helen] was my godmother and was Kinross White’s only daughter. She married an Englishman who worked on the farm, Duncan Holden, and they had a son, Peter who’s ninety, the same as me now. And we used to have Christmases together, and we were born in the same bed; we’ve had a similar life. We have a lunch together once a month; Peter’s very old now and he’s staggering along on sticks, but he’s got a very good mind.

Peter and I used to have Christmases – I remember them clearly – Granny was … we used to sleep in the same beds as her two sons because her second son [Adrian] was killed [while] in the Air Force. He was an Oxford Blue; he went to Oxford University and became a District Commissioner in Uganda, in the British Civil Service. Rodney White was the younger brother – these were my father’s younger two brothers. Anyway, it was a rich life, and I’ve got lovely photographs of all the family together in front of the house. I can tell you all the names of them; I could probably find it, I should’ve got it ready for you, I’m sorry.

That’s okay, I can come back in another session.

Anyway, Peter’s father [Duncan] was very horsey and he was the Master of Hounds for the Dannevirke Hunt, and my father was Master of Hounds for the Hawke’s Bay Hunt, all through the war; and my mother was very horsey and rode horses.

I went to Canterbury University for a year to study to be an engineer, but I was a very slow methodical mathematician, and I didn’t have the insights of going straight to the answer. So after the year I left, and my father offered me a position of riding – he used to train race horses … steeplechasers … and he offered me a ride on this horse that he’d trained in the Hunt Club Steeplechase. And I thought, ‘That’s much more exciting than going to university and studying’, ‘cause I was a slow student. So I put it off; the steeplechase was in May and I was going to lose two or three months of university, but I thought, ‘I’ll carry on my studies’. I joined up with the British Institute of Engineering Technology and did it by correspondence, and I was working hard on the farm and I just didn’t have the energy to do my studies so it gradually faded away, and I just said, “Oh well, I’ll become a farmer then.” And I worked on the farm for about forty years.

We had a big farm. I had ten thousand sheep with both farms I looked after. My father left home after too many rows with my mother, and I was left looking after my mother and running both farms; for ten years I did that, so I was pretty well pressed down, and my mother was never very well. She was an alcoholic and she eventually ended up in a psych unit, but she recovered, and my father came back to live with her. He retired to Havelock North, and he was still in love with her but he just couldn’t get through to her. She was a painter … she was a very good painter, and passed the skills on to my daughter. And I actually used to paint too – I went to an art school in London for a year, but I was a sort of dilettante; I just couldn’t think what to do in life. But I eventually ended up back on the farm and it was by default really. I just carried on there, and then I got into horses.

What was your first horse’s name?

Hopalong.

What breed was Hopalong?

Hopalong was a little 14.2 hands high pony which my mother heard about. And FEI [Fédération Équestre Internationale (International Federation for Equestrian Sports)] Jumping was just coming in because my uncle, Duncan Holden, was the founder of the New Zealand Horse Society. Previous to that competitions were called Round the Ring Jumping; but then FEI Jumping was coloured fences all in different patterns, and my uncle brought that into New Zealand. He wasn’t very popular because Kiwis had got used to their way and thought, ‘This Englishman’s telling us what to do, and this is a crazy idea’, but my cousin Peter and I were the first to shine at it. And Hopalong was a little pony that a little Maori boy used to ride at a hunt, just with a sack and a rope through his mouth like an Indian, and he jumped all the fences and never fell down. So my mother heard about him and bought him down and we fed him ‘cause he was half starved when he got down here. And he grew another half hand which meant he grew out of Pony Class so he had to go into Horse Classes, and he became very good at it … won all the competitions at the Dannevirke Show. And then we both got into a show jumping team to represent New Zealand … the first time ever … at the Sydney Royal Show. My cousin was riding a horse called Starlight and I was riding Hopalong, and we went over on the old ‘Monowai’ to Sydney.

What Hawke’s Bay events were happening at the time that you started to get into horse jumping or equestrian?

Well we used to go to sports meetings – every weekend we went to a sports meeting. They were at Elsthorpe and Ongaonga, and … and they were big events. They used to have athletics there, with running and racing, and wrestling, and pony events, horse events … there were very strong communities there in villages, and they all got together. And Pukehou here – I used to go to Sunday School at the Paper Mulberry; then Sunday School ended and the building then became a theatre, and the Pukehou Players won the major Amateur Dramatics award for Hawke’s Bay in a play called ‘Demetrius’ – all my relations were acting in it.

And then the roof fell in, and they called a meeting and they said, “Anybody who speaks will be on the committee”, so it was a very quiet meeting. [Chuckle] But eventually they got a committee and they decided to rebuild and make it a village hall. And then a lady who was boarding with us who was a school teacher, Jenny Senior – she was a school teacher at Te Aute College – started a school for dance there. I remember my youngest daughter, Charlotte, dancing the polka with Melanie McLean … two little girls dancing together.

Then local people were wanting to start a cafe. They were my neighbours, Jan and Geoff Speedman. And my other neighbours, David and Lyn Robinson – he was a retired policeman and he wanted to start a cafe; and they both had the same idea so they joined together and they painted it outrageous colours, and then just opened the door and people started coming in, and have been coming in for the last fifteen years. It’s a very successful cafe now.

But I remember we had village dances there once a month where we played Victor Sylvester tunes. There was a piano, a saxophone and drums and we used to dance; and an MC [Master of Ceremonies] saying, “Gentlemen, take your partners for the opening quickstep.”

I remember having some very, very emotional times there, ‘cause I was twelve, I think. I’d fallen in love with the postmistress’s daughter, but I was so shy! I used to go down on my pony to collect the mail, and I remember you pressed a button and you either got a huge barrage of coughing and old Mrs Donald would come out with a cigarette in her lips and a whole lot of ash on it; the ash had fallen into the desk and she’d go like this, looking for letters, and give it to you through this little hatchway; but if there wasn’t a cacophony of coughing, there’d be just little light steps … “That’s her! That’s Daphne.” And Daphne would come and she’d look at me, and she said, “Hello.” And I couldn’t even say hello; my tongue had gone hard. [Chuckle] And she thought, ‘That poor White boy, he must be retarded.’ [Chuckle] And I was. [Chuckle]

Anyway, then I heard that she was going to come to one of these dances. So in those days we used to put Brylcreem on our hair and have it all schmick; so I put on far too much Brylcreem and in the heat it started to melt and go down my face. I stood in a corner, which I still have a feeling about, in the Paper Mulberry … in the the far right hand corner when you’re facing the entrance. And she was so pretty my heart was going like this; and she got all the dances. Boys queued up to dance with her, and I remember the hatred I had for those boys, taking my girl. [Chuckle] I didn’t have enough gumption to go up and ask her for a dance – I couldn’t dance anyway. But then we had a dance called the Gay Gordons, and the Gay Gordons is where you stand in a great big circle and you change partners. I thought, ‘I’ll get on the floor and I’m bound to dance with her then!’ And in those days the unfortunate girls … we called them wallflowers; nobody asked them to [for] a dance … and this rather large girl with pimples, I asked her, “Could I have this dance please?” And for an awful moment I thought she was going to refuse, [chuckle] but she said, “All right.” ‘Cause she knew it was Gay Gordons, she wouldn’t have to dance with this creep for than a few [rounds] through it. And so I was dancing and changing over, but I had my eye on Daphne coming closer and closer and closer, and my heart was going like this … and then all of a sudden we parted and we came together and I suddenly felt sick, [chuckle] so I rushed outside [chuckle] and she had nobody to dance with. She must have thought, ‘Oh, he must hate me!’ And that was the end of our relationship, unfortunately. [Chuckles] But I remember the Paper Mulberry … oh, I was so shy! I didn’t marry ‘til was thirty-four, and then I married my second cousin. I took her to Hunt Balls ‘cause I thought, ‘Well you can’t marry your cousin – at least I don’t have to face marriage.’ I had this … didn’t want to marry anybody. So I eventually got married and had this girl, poor little Kate …

Kate: [Chuckle] Oh, it was all right.

Adrian: And then my mother had persuaded me to go to these sports meetings, and she was so competitive that if we didn’t get a ribbon we wouldn’t get dinner. So we thought, ‘We’ll get hungry – we’d better win something.” [Chuckle] My mother said, “You must strive harder and you must win!” And she bought expensive ponies for us; she was quite well off. She came from a First Four Ships family in South Canterbury called the Elworthys; the Elworthys were quite famous and they had a large farm and lots of children.

And my mother … they dressed for dinner every night in black ties, just for a farming dinner, and they had a butler and they had footmen and masses of servants; she was brought up like that. And then she fell in love with my father and married him, and I remember my mother’s father saying, “Who is this man?” And my dad built a little wee four roomed house and his father-in-law said, “Well will you have servants? Because you’ll have to have a room for the servant.” So my dad built a little wee box out from the … and they had a maid. The maid was the cook as well, and they had such a tiny dining room that my mother had to get up and move her chair to open the door to the kitchen whenever the maid … to get the next course. [Of] course that lasted about a month and then the maid was sacked, and Dad used the little maid’s room as an office.

My mother was a very good rider; she’d ridden all her life and she won [was] the only person to win the three main Round the Ring jumps at the Hawke’s Bay Spring Show. She won the Ladies’ Leaping, the Open Leaping and the Hunters; she won all three on a horse called Toitoi which was my father’s hunter. Life was full of horses; we used to ride every day, and then when we started the show jumping the horses were all shod and fed well – the bill for oats and chaff was huge. We had a big stable out the back and when I took over the farms I rode eight hours a day … I used to come back in and get another horse, so I got used to riding.

And then I had the success on Hopalong and got in these two teams. But my mother was looking out on the market to buy better and better horses, and I was starting to get this reputation as being up there

What age were you when you started getting recognition?

Twenty-one.

Who scouted you? Or who kind of helped you get into the profession?

Well, my mother and father. My father was a good horseman; but at one stage there was a big family row at dinner because he said, “I’ve counted up sixty-eight horses.” And we were only a small farm – five hundred acres – and the big farm was next door, which was the Trust farm which my grandfather actually left to my father, and he changed it to a Trust before he took ownership of it because he would’ve had to pay all sorts of taxes. So that Trust gave us a small income, and on that all us children went overseas, and [it] helped with our boarding school fees and things like that.

So Grandfather was a self-made man and he didn’t believe in inherited money. Oh, when the walls came down and killed all the female staff … the young girls … my father thought, ‘Well all the mortgage documents are destroyed -that’s good, I’ll have no mortgage.’ But these old bank managers stitched it all together and Grandfather charged him – old fashioned mortgages – and he had to buy every acre of this farm. And he was a bit that way inclined himself, too, he didn’t like people having an easy time; you had to work, struggle … so that struggle has been part of my life I suppose … but anyway, I said to my mother, “Mum, if I get to an Olympic Games, will you lay off me and let me go?” And she said, “Oh, don’t be silly, you’ll never do that. You’ll never do that.” Anyway, then there was a totally deranged Hungarian riding instructor came to live in Hawke’s Bay; he was Coloman de Bolgar, and he had a story to tell. He was a world champion pentathlon [pentathlete] and he was a an officer in the Hungarian army. He was in the Light Panzers, and the Light Panzers went into battle on a motorbike with a side car with a machine gun. They were the shock troops who attacked first, and Coloman [de] Bolgar shot a lot of Russians – they were on the Russian Front, fighting for the Germans against the Russians. And Hitler opened the Second Front, and then the Russians began to win and they came in and occupied Eastern Europe including Hungary. Coloman was actually a Bulgarian but he’d been brought up in Hungary, in Budapest. He was a marked man as the Russians took over; Eastern Europe went Communist, d’you remember? The Berlin Wall and all that stuff – so Coloman was a marked man. The Russians were seeking out ex-officers and shooting them … just firing squad stuff, just cleaning them out … and he managed to save his children by boarding them up, just the same as Anne Frank was boarded up, in a former house. And there were several raids but he escaped over the bridge at Andau – there’s a famous book called ‘The Bridge at Andau’ – and it was where political refugees went over from Hungary into Italy [Austria, and then] over the Alps. He got over in about 1950-something, and because of his reputation he joined the Italian Olympic team – he liaised with them, trained with them – and he swung to show jumping ‘cause with pentathlon there’s running, riding, shooting and sword fighting. But he never learnt much English; I had him as an instructor for twenty years and I never understood a word he said the whole time. [Chuckle] I’d just seemed to [chuckle] go along with the gestures and the stock whip. He was a tough man.

He came to New Zealand and sort of took over New Zealand Show Jumping, and he used to run things called ‘Bolgar’ courses, but there was a big worry for me which made it very difficult in that my uncle, Duncan Holden, who was the director of the New Zealand Horse Society, couldn’t stand Coloman [de] Bolgar. He hated him, and most English people hated Europeans – they hated [the] French, and as you got further east they became absolutely non-people. And Coloman, with his rough English and his rough way of instructing was just the anathema [to Duncan].

But then Coloman [de] Bolgar thought from his instruction New Zealand could put a showing up at the Olympic Games. So he had a friend called Mrs H D MacDonald from Matamata, and she had a very good horse called Telebrae; Telebrae was ridden by two brothers called David and Richard [Graeme] Goodin. He [Coloman] said to Mrs MacDonald, “If I can find a rider, will you lend your horse for the Olympic Games?” And it was all in his own head – the Horse Society were [was] just starting but they didn’t have the funds or the expertise to send … ‘Cause when a sport is going into the Olympic Games there’s a huge amount of bureaucracy, and they’re starting new sports all the time. The Games is going to be in a few weeks, isn’t it?

Kate: Yeah.

Adrian: In Paris. So anyway Coloman had this in his mind, and he got a young rider from Wellington who’s father had a big butchers shop and he was a wealthy man. Coloman knew we’d have to pay ourselves, we wouldn’t have any sponsorship money, so he got this young guy who was only sixteen, but eventually he thought he was too young. Then there was I sitting on the Waikareao farm which had ten thousand sheep, and the Creaghe farm; he said, ‘That guy’s got a bit of money and his parents’ve done Bolgar courses – I’ll ask him.’ So this is how I started my book. The phone rang and this rough voice said, “You vill come to my house.” Put the phone down. I thought, ‘Oh God!’ I’d been training with him to go to the Sydney Royal Show, and I was quite senior then and I was sort of one of the go-to riders in New Zealand. And so I went to his house in fear and trembling – I was actually pretty terrified of him. And then he asked me into his kitchen and there was a bottle on the [?] and two glasses. In those days New Zealanders drank whisky and beer; wine was hardly ever drunk.

A celebration drink?

Well not even celebration, I mean, it wasn’t known. But Coloman being a Catholic and being European, he bought his wine from the Mission Vineyards where the old monks used to brew a very potent brew because when they had wine at the Communion they wanted a bit of a kick. So this bottle sitting on the kitchen table was pretty potent, and he poured me a glass and sat down. And I thought it was fruit juice. I drank it; I thought, ‘That’s [a] bit funny.’ And then [he] poured the glass again and I drank it again, and suddenly I started to feel a bit sort of strange, up in the air. He said, “Ve go to ze Olympics, yes?” I said, “What a good idea!” [Chuckle] Hadn’t the faintest idea what he was even talking about. By then I was sort of a bit wobbly, and he poured me a third glass, and then he played his ace card. His drop-dead beautiful seventeen year old daughter sashayed through the room in a filmy dress. He said, “Ve go?” I said, “Is she coming?” He said, “Of course.” I said, “Right – I’m your man.”

So what was the process of having that initial conversation with him to then going to the Olympics?

Well … I got up and I could hardly walk, and I staggered to the door and I grabbed the door, swung round and said, “Coloman, we’ve got a problem.” He said, “Vat’s that?” He thought I was going to slide out of it. I said, “I haven’t got a horse.” I had a vague idea that to go to the Olympics Show Jumping you’d need a horse. I had two or three horses but they weren’t up to that standard. He said, “Not to vorry, I fix”, and about three days later Telebrae was dropped off at my gate. And I used him as a hack … a lambing beat … and then I began to show jump him through that season and he came to all the sports meetings and things, and I started to win with him.

Then he said he knew he was offside with Duncan Holden, and made some bubbling noises about going to the Games. The Horse Society said, “No, we can’t afford that, we’re only just starting.” They had no money. And Coloman said, “Not to worry”, he said, “Adrian vill pay.” And so then the Horse Society built a replica of the [show jumping arena at the] Olympic Games in Stockholm, and asked me to school over it; see how I did, what score I’d have. It was after the season was over; people had turned their horses out, so they built the course at the Hastings Royal Show. There was a famous guy called Hugh Thompson who was a fanatical rider, and he had a little horse called Cassidy. He bought Cassidy because I’d had Hopalong, so we had Hopalong and Cassidy at the Shows. And he would ride anything; Hugh was a buck jump rider, and a polo player, and a show jump rider and he’d just won the main event at the Horse of the Year Show in Auckland. And he’d come down, turned his horse out for three weeks and then he saw in the paper, ‘Wanted – Competition for Olympic Potential’, so he went out and got Cassidy in, put a saddle on him, took him to the Show, and on the way down from Auckland he rode Cassidy in a polo competition. And then he picked up … you know, rodeos there was a pick up man, and when a rider was still on board after bucking the pick up man would come in and pick him off … and that was a very skilled job, and Cassidy [was] used for that. Then he came down to the Show ring and he jumped the only clear round of the event. In the Stockholm Olympics there’d been no clear rounds, and this little horse [chuckle] who’d been … I’ve got a big lot of photographs of him jumping clear.

And Gus Meech who was another show jumping man … I used to visit him in Mary Doyle [Retirement Village]; Gus died the other day. And Gus Meech rode with him and they both had higher scores than me – Cassidy had twelve, Gus Meech on Costa had eight and I had twelve faults, but it was still enough, so they said, “Right, we will nominate you but you have to perform in Europe and send back your scores after each International Show. We will nominate you as an official international representative, but we won’t nominate you for the Games until you’ve proved yourself.”

So I went over under those conditions. And I built my own box, put him on a cargo ship in Napier harbour, and I loaded old Telebrae up. My father paid for the … [it] cost £500 for the fee for the horse but I got a job on the ship as a supernumerary. I had a friend called John Howard who I’ve mentioned – he came, and we both worked on the ship. The big issue of my whole trip was I set off here with absolutely no money. We used to exercise the horse on deck, just led him around, and the sailors got quite interested so I said, “Would you like a ride?” So we’d leg them on board and lead them around for 2/6d, [two shillings and sixpence] and by the end of six weeks I had £12 in my pocket. It was the only money I had.

Kate: Were there rails on the boat?

Adrian: Just that high; and the horse would come and stare over there – [I’d think] ‘Oh, don’t jump over, please.’ [Chuckle] Anyway, he was a very quiet horse.

But the thing is I haven’t written my book because everything was … just penniless. I had no money for petrol; I just used to use prize money, ‘cause I won a few competitions and got paid in prize money. When we were invited to a Show all our expenses were paid because we were an official New Zealand representative. And I didn’t want to put that aspect because Duncan Holden was a very strict guy, and it was like a screwed up gypsy thing; [it] had no pride or honour about it. And it was that too, because we won competitions and I kept up with the leaders of [in] the world, but the lack of funds … and of course the Horse Society not paying for me was a big thing down to him too. So I’ve always felt, even with Peter Holden, that there’s a sort of an element to my whole trip which was not very laudatory.

Kate: Through no fault of your own.

Adrian: No; well I mean, I should never’ve accepted to go – I was just under Coloman’s thumb and my mother’s thumb. I was just a ‘yes’ man, and I remember my godfather meeting me in the Hastings Club and saying, “Are you happy with this, you’re not being pushed?” I said, “Yes, I am being pushed but I’ve got to go through with it now, I’ve said ‘yes.’” When I say ‘yes’ I stick to my word, and I didn’t think I could possibly back out with any credibility. So it was sort of … My friend, Alistair Campbell, who was an Englishmen, he started a fund for me; he called it ‘Operation Telelympics’. And we went to a movie once with Coloman [de] Bolgar, and on the advertisements that came up between the films came this thing, ‘Donate to Operation Telelympics’. And Coloman was furious! He said, “What’s this? I thought you had the money?” I said, “I haven’t got the money.” [Chuckle] He said, “Never mind, we go.”

He must’ve had a few savings – he was a racehorse trainer, and he had a horse called Mama Mia. He started a motel in Omahu Road and he called it the Mama Mia Hotel, [Motel] and that would bring in a bit of money so he had a bit of money; and he bought a car when he got over there and he took his daughter and his wife around, and they came and drove ahead of us and sort of organised things. There was no IT [Information Technology] in those days, there were just cables, so they cabled my results back to the Horse Society who were keeping a book, and then had a meeting to decide whether I would become an official Olympic representative or not, not until three weeks before the Games started – I still didn’t know whether I was going to be nominated. So that was another funny story.

So we’ve been recording for an hour; I’m happy to continue if you’re happy?

Adrian: Well I’ll tell the story anyway, ‘cause my farming career, such as it is … [Chuckle] Okay well …

Kate: We haven’t even got to Rome Olympics yet. [Chuckle]

Adrian: Well, that’s another story in itself. It was in the dining room of a pension in Salsomaggiore in Northern Italy, and Coloman was waiting for this cable that I was nominated otherwise we were going back to the White City Show where we’d been invited, and I was quite keen to do that, I said, “Oh this Olympic stuff, it’s for the birds, you know … just too much involved.” Anyway, the worm finally turned – he’d been shouting at me for nearly a year, and I hadn’t been able to make any progress with his daughter either, ‘cause he was a strict Catholic. “You touch my daughter and I …” [Chuckles] And I had this problem too, I was really lusting after her …

Is this still at the age of twenty-one?

Oh no, I was twenty-seven then. So anyway, we started arguing, and I suddenly felt this anger coming out … built up anger against him. “Got me in all this bloody trouble – I just said yes all the time and look where I am!” And I mean we’d bought a horse float for £50; it was a cattle truck, and I changed it into being a place we could sleep and we put the horse out on the side of the road with a rope yard. We drove for twelve hours sometimes down the German autobahns going from country to country, just map reading our way. It was an old truck and there was a hole in the back cab, and the horse could put his head through into the cab. I was driving and John was sitting there and the horse was in the middle, and John was … do you remember that character Mr Ed, the Talking Horse?

Kate: I remember it.

Adrian: But John used to take Mac – we used to call the horse Mac because his owner was Mrs MacDonald. He was called Telebrae, we called him Mac. And Mac always had something to say, and John would take his part … “What do you think Mac?” And Mac would give his opinion, so it was a three-way conversation down all these autobahns. And when we went to smart parties at the big international shows, standing around drinking champagne out of long-stemmed glasses, John would cheekily take Mac’s voice and nobody would know where it was coming from; ‘cause he was a ventriloquist. [Chuckle] We had a lot of fun like that, just sort of simple fun.

Anyway, we were in this motel; I was waiting for this cable to come through and I started arguing with Coloman and he arced up; and we both arced up and we were almost … In the end I got up and my chair fell over behind and crashed to the floor and all the conversation in the dining room stopped. And I said, “Well I’m out of here!” And I just walked out with my nose in the air. And at the corner of the room there were two doors out – one was the proper door out, the other was a broom cupboard, and I took the wrong door; went out and I slammed the door behind me and I was standing in a broom cupboard. [Chuckles] I thought, ‘Oh God! What do I do now?’ [Chuckle] I started shrinking again; everybody stopped talking. They were waiting to see what the outcome would be, and I waited for the conversation would [to] start again but it didn’t start, so I thought, ‘If it starts again I’ll just sneak out’, and it didn’t and so I opened the door. I emerged to a standing ovation, everybody clapping, [laughs] and Coloman was laughing his head off. And so all of my rebellion had just blown up. I think he was called out to the office and a cable came through and I was nominated, so any talk of going back to White City was stopped. But these were huge high tensions for me.

We had been jumping with the Italian Olympic team and it was their outing; we sort of got seconded to them. Their instructor was going to build the course at Rome. You don’t know what course you’re going to have until you walk the course just a few minutes before the competition starts, so that you’ve got to be really well trained to take everything in. So anyway, this was a huge advantage for me and I knew Coloman would be useful at some stage. But my uncle was over there with his wife and other members of the Horse Society to catch up on me, and there was lots of other dramas after that, too. But anyway it was a stressful time, but I seemed to wear it all right.

The relationship I had with Carla, his daughter, was a very distant one … we didn’t even shake hands. But anyway, one night I thought, ‘I’m going to consummate this’, so [chuckle] I got out of my bed and I walked up [to] this little doorway; I knew where her room was, and his room was there; and I stood on a creaky board [chuckle] and it went creeak! And a light came on under his doorway straight away, so I [chuckle] … I backed off. I thought, ‘Oh no, I’m going to try …’ [Chuckle] ‘Cause I would’ve been murdered – he said to me, “I’ll run you through if you touch my daughter.” And being the world champion swordsman, I knew … not that he carried his épée with him.

But we had a very strange relationship and it carried on the rest of our lives, actually. I went to his funeral; he settled in Hastings and I didn’t even know. I used to drive past his house. His wife had left him and gone to live in … and his daughter had gone to live in Australia as well. He had his funeral in the Catholic Church in Hastings and his coffin was down there, and the priest was having [swinging] incense around everywhere. I went to the Tokyo Olympics as well – that’s another story, not quite as long as this one. But I was in a team then – there were four others, three from Gisborne and me, and we all came down to be coffin bearers. And we were all sitting down, but we’d all put on quite a lot of weight then. [Chuckle] Graeme Hansen had a big tummy and he was wearing his Olympic jacket, and we knelt down to pray and the strain was too great and there was a pop! like that. A button had come off [chuckle] and it came up and then it landed on my head. I picked it up and I showed it to him … “Is this yours?” And we all started laughing, and all the people up behind us saw our shoulders shaking and they thought, ‘Oh, those poor boys, they’re missing their wonderful instructor.’ [Chuckle] And we were just trying to stop shrieking with laughter. And we all bore him out, and he was buried. I remember seeing him in his coffin with the lid off, and gee, I couldn’t recognise him, ‘cause people’s faces just … my brother Jeremy was like that, I couldn’t recognise him. The faces just shrink in … I’ll be the same I suppose.

Anyway, there were lots of other Coloman funnies, like this incident in the pension and my going through the wrong door. There were lots of stories like that where they’re separate from the whole thing, but I didn’t know to put them into the book, or what sort of pattern the book should have; whether it’s just a story of the dates and the prize money I got and all that stuff.

Kate: Oh, maybe treat it as a chronology to begin with … a timeline … and then you can add these little forays off to the left and right as they happen perhaps – might be an easier way …

Adrian: You’d make a good show of it. There’s a lot of material there and I’ve got about two hundred photographs. I’m poised to do it but I just wanted to have the diaries that show these were the dates I did it.

But to cut a long story short, I got equal with the gold medallist in my second round. My first round was a disaster – we lost our way and I got nine time faults, and error off course, and everything else, so I got up to thirty-five faults, I think. So my final placing was twenty-third out of sixty-nine starters, so that was enough to justify that I was up with the play.

Kate: Wasn’t this the one where the horse was found actually to be blind in one eye …

Adrian: Yeah.

Kate: … afterwards? So he got twenty-third.

Adrian: So we sold the horse to Pat Smythe. I’ve got about four books of hers up there. She was the most famous show jumping rider in the world. She rode for England in several Olympic Games, and she wrote books and she popularised the sport for the whole world. Well she bought Telebrae, and we took him all the way back to Gloucestershire where she lived – or Miserden in Gloucestershire – I stayed with her for a few days. And she was royalty for the show jumping world. But he’d gone blind in one eye and the vet didn’t pick it up. She took him to the White City and she won the Puissance on him. The Puissance is the power jumping … she jumped a wall at six foot four. John and I were going up to meet her and we were wagging our tails and saying, “Oh, well done! Well done!” And she had a look of thunder – she said, “Did you know your horse was blind in one eye?” When you sell a dud horse – it’s a terrible thing to do – the Irish do it all the time; [chuckles] they tell jokes about it. [Chuckles] But I said, “No, hadn’t the faintest idea.” I said, “Don’t you remember he was vetted?” I remember [thinking], ‘Why are they taking him into the dark loose box and shining a torch in his eye?’ I thought, ‘What? I’ve never seen that done before.’ “Yes”, she said, “nobody knows how the vet missed it.” But he was blind.

Kate: And he ran a round equal to the gold medallist on the second round of the show jumping.

Adrian: Yeah. He was twelve faults. Raimondo D’Inzeo on a horse called Pasillipo won. And I’d come from Salsomaggiore where I was with the Italian team, jumping over these fences. I’d had a foretaste of the fences you see, and that’s what gave me a big advantage – because of Coloman’s relationship with the old style Italian jumping team.

So anyway, there’s a lot I could say about my farming career.

We can save that for another session?

Yes.

Having an organic farm on no chemicals for forty years is an incredible story to be told for Hawke’s Bay horticulture.

Well my son runs the farm now, and he’s a bit chary about organics, and he said, “We’ve got virtually no grass; we’ve had no rain.” The guy who sends his organic cows here for winter, he’s from Levin and he said, “We’ve had the driest season on record here.” We normally have a hundred and fifty cows but we’ll barely have room for fifty this year which will cut our income down by two-thirds. We’re very, very tight at the moment and so is he – he’s going to have to sell stock.

Kate: Have they had rain in Levin?

Adrian: Yes, they had 40ml, and Matt says that the land is so good. He said our land is not good – it’s clay, and it’s not deep rooted black soil, it’s only about that deep and the grass roots only go down that far. Matt said, “We’ve had fifteen years of good rainy winters and summers”, and that’s been the most amazing gift; we’ve been able to do this and we’ve had quite a high income. I had a chap in Wellington I used to ring every year and get the average income per hectare for dry land farms up the East Coast, and this farm was almost double because we were selling hay to the organic people and charging more for it. So that lasted about fifty years, but it’s come to an abrupt halt now. And Matt says that Wayne Moxon’s grass will grow with 40mls ‘cause it’s deep-rooted black earth; he gets something like twenty thousand kilograms per hectare of dry matter, and we get six – that’s the difference. See, most farms use urea now as a nitrogen boost and that’s ruining everything – it’s spoiling our water …

Kate: And it destroys the relationship between the plant roots and the mycelium, being top-fed, because usually they’re fed from underneath and the mycelium has a very delicate fungal layer. If there’s no feeding needing the roots, and the plants and the mycelium relationship breaks apart, so then what happens when you stop top-feeding they can’t get it from below either, and it becomes a terrible … yeah.

Adrian: But the thing is that God’s creation is a miracle. Urea makes the grass grow three times as fast, but it doesn’t pick up the minerals, so you feed it to the cattle and then you’ve got to drench the cattle, you’ve got to vaccinate the cattle; it’s all a chemical structure now. And all the food in the supermarket’s all like this – that’s why the hospitals are full of cancer; Starship Children’s Hospital – cancer was never known amongst kids.

Kate: There’s the obesity as well, [and] people actually starving to death. They might look overweight, but there’s no nutrients in the … it’s rubbish.

Adrian: We’re in a bad state. There are some wonderful things being done in the organic world; I watch the farming programme …

Country Calendar?

Country Calendar – people thinking, and running small blocks. ‘Cause when I lost my two thousand acres under Roger Douglas – interest rates of thirty percent payable monthly in advance – he destroyed the rural sector. It’s never been recorded because some people made a lot of money out of it. He has had one book called ‘Rogernomics’ – one book written about his term. But my interest rates were thirty percent, and I had a huge mortgage having bought out all my relations; I was paying $50,000 a year in interest just to keep my mortgage going, so I’ve had a real heavy blow. And now Luxon’s going to bring back genetic engineering, which will be the final blow.

Kate: Dad had a go at him at the Horse of the Year Show … [Chuckles] Good on you, Dad.

Adrian: Yeah, I met Luxon at the Horse of the Year, and I had a yarn to him too. I said, “One of your policies fills me with deep concern.” He said, “What’s that?” I said, “Bringing back genetic engineering.” He said, “Oh, you’re old fashioned! Technology has advanced since your day.” I said, “Yes, but reputation and contamination haven’t.” He said, “Oh, you’re wrong again; lots of countries now accept GE [genetically engineered] food.” I said, “Which ones?” And he said, “Denmark, Luxembourg.” I said, [chuckle] “What do they buy from us?”

And Sam Tane [Jack Tame] you know, of QE [Q+A] … he attacked Luxon with some very good data, saying our reputation will just go, countries don’t want it. Luxon was getting really hammered by Tame, and eventually Luxon said, “Look, I’m not a scientist, I’m a politician, so you can shut up.” You see he’s just been …

Kate: Lobbied …

Adrian: … bullied by scientists and big companies who want to make money out of it, just the same as vaccine companies do. Luxon, he may have taken on board what I said.

Kate: I’m proud of you; I’m very proud of you, you held your own – that’s really wonderful.

Adrian: And in the end his man said, “Come on, you’ve spoken with this guy long enough.” He has to move on all the time. But he was at the Horse of the Year Show giving out prizes and making speeches, and he does speak well. I said to him for a start, “You’ve had your first hundred days and I think you’ve done well because you inherited a mess. ” ‘Cause Labour had overspent like … I mean, our overseas debt is in the trillions now. And he softened; he said, “Oh thank you, it’s nice to be appreciated.” I said, “But … [chuckle]

Kate: He’s done one good thing – he’s banned cell phones in classrooms.

Adrian: Yes, he has.

Kate: Very, very good, I approve of that – that takes courage. [Chuckle]

Adrian: He’s a businessman; he’s a figures, numbers man. And philosophy and what makes us human, and what is the essence of being a human being, he’s left; he’s just looking at the figures, and he’s sacked ten thousand jobs in Wellington. What are those people going to do? I mean, jeepers creepers … unemployment’s shooting up, and yet we’re still the best country in the world to live in, so we’ve got to be [chuckle] grateful for that.

[Break]

Kate: I run a bit like Dad … slightly against the downflow of the river, promoting rooks as [chuckle] [a] soil remediation programme; I don’t think farmers would agree with me, but …

Adrian: The rooks eat grass grub.

Kate: But they also stir up the soil and aerate the soil, and then the thistle seeds germinate and come up. And the farmers say, “No, it’s no good.” But as Dad would say, he watched the thistles come up and then the thistles go again, because we’ve compacted the soil and we’ve drained it of nutrients, [and it’s] exposed to the sun. So when you get the diversity of plant life coming up … farmers’ve been trained to think, ‘Rye grass, rye grass, rye grass’ and occasionally plantain, but they’ve realised that there’s this plethora of what we’d called weeds which are fantastic; they all bring different minerals to the surface. The cattle can self-medicate, they need less pharmaceutical intervention. And all this time the rooks have been poisoned and taken out of it – they’ve been here a hundred and sixty years, so they’re no threat to native birds, they’re an agricultural bird. And I do realise when the ground gets too hard they go for the cereal crops, and that’s tough for farmers when you’ve got too many big numbers. But the other thing they actually do if you look at the balance is they’re pioneers – they resurface the soil and get it ready for the plants to come up. So I’m advocating for them not to be eradicated entirely; I think it’s very cruel what’s done to them.

Adrian: And you see, the thistles come – when you put on urea they’re boosted as well and so they use glyphosate … Roundup … to spray the thistles and that’s in every food – doom sayers here – but every piece of food you buy in the supermarket’s got glyphosate in it.

Kate: We have a doctor who swears that it’s responsible for at least a third of the asthma cases in Hawke’s Bay, glyphosate poisonining. There’s always a downstream price to pay.

Adrian: However, there’s very few of us left on the ground …

Kate: [Chuckle] We’ll go down fighting, Dad.

Today is Saturday 11th May. Hello Adrian, how are you today?

I’m okay, thank you. I’m … you said we broke off just before the Olympics?

Yes.

I had a lot of tension with my trainer who just shouted at me and I couldn’t really understand what he was saying; he was a Bulgarian. The Horse Society had put me through tests and they built replica courses of the Olympics in Stockholm and jumped me over them, and they decided that they would allow me to go as an official representative of the country to what’s called CHIO [Concours Hippique International Officiel] Shows in Europe. We were to cable back our placings and whether we got up to the mark, and Coloman [de] Bolgar did all that.

But we got to a little town called Salsomaggiore in the north of Italy where we were seconded to the Italian Olympic Show Jumping team through Coloman [de] Bolgar’s earlier connections, so it was very valuable. But we were competing at that show, sent our cables back and we were waiting for a cable from the Horse Society to say we were nominated officially. Had we not [been] I was to return to England where I had been invited to jump at White City Show which I was quite keen to do. Coloman wasn’t; he wanted to go ahead and go to the Olympics.

So what category were you nominated for?

For the individual Grand Prix Show Jumping. They had two competitions for horses at Rome which was unusual. One was for individuals and one for teams, and I was just on my own so I was nominated for the individual.

What year was this?

1960. I had been quiet and compliant with Coloman who was very dictatorial to me, but I had a rising irritation about his manners; it often comes that the trainee gets angry with the trainer. So we were sitting in a little pension in Salsomaggiore having breakfast. I said I would be quite happy to go to White City if I wasn’t nominated, and Coloman thought that was a terrible idea because he hated the English and they hated him. He was an Eastern European and didn’t get on with English people … don’t know why he emigrated to New Zealand; it was the only place he could go I think, after the war.

But the cable came through that we were nominated to [for] the Olympics, so we started off down the centre of Italy which is a range of mountains, and we arrived at Rome … turned round the corner and there was Rome; it was a white-walled city in the sunlight – it looked so magnificent. I drove in with a feeling of awe.

We joined up with the New Zealand team and I was issued with a uniform. And I remember on the Opening Day marching in the team, very proud. We did a circuit of the stadium, everybody cheering. Then on the first day there was Peter Snell running in the 800m and Murray Halberg running in the 1500m, and they both won and I remember seeing the New Zealand flag rising and standing up for the New Zealand national anthem and feeling, ‘This is a piece of cake! All the locals are getting there, so I’ll have no problems.’

The Individual Show Jumping was held at show grounds called the Piazza di Siena. It was surrounded by trees and the first round was at seven o’clock in the morning; the sun hadn’t even come up, it was just on the horizon. And Raimondo D’Inzeo who eventually won the gold medal went at No 6, and he had a clear round. Then I came in as the sun just poked over the horizon, and the sunlight shone casting shadows over the whole course … I’ve got photographs of it. I was a bit nervous and had a few fences down, but then the third to last fence was a rustic style, very narrow and very high, and a shadow was falling right down across it. And I simply missed it; I turned and was going for the last fence which had I jumped would’ve been an error of course, and I would’ve been eliminated, which would’ve been a terrible disgrace having gone all that way and then lost your way. But there was a cry from the crowd saying, “It’s over here, you bloody idiot!” And I recognised the voice, it was a friend who’d come from New Zealand.

Who was the friend?

The friend was called Jerome White.

Any relation?

No relation. His father was a dentist in Hastings.

The announcer said, “If the crowd insist on helping the competitor he will be eliminated.” Hah! Jerome shut up. I did a circle and got back on track but in the circle it was building up time faults and I had turned my back on the fence which was three faults, so I achieved another twelve faults from that but I completed the course. And having jumped just after the eventual winner with a clear round, the only New Zealand correspondent who I’d already met cabled back that I was completely overfaced and unable to cope. And that was the news that got to New Zealand.

Then in my second round my score was equal with the gold medallist, and he did a magnificent round and jumped a treble which is very difficult [and] nobody had jumped correctly. He jumped it correctly and I have a photograph of him over the last fence which was the crowning triumph of the whole trip. It showed that I was up to scratch. But my final placing, adding the score of my first round which was twenty-five, I think, and the twelve was another thirty. But that got me to be twenty-third out of sixty-nine starters, which was reputable. After I had had my poor round in the first round – there were fifteen horses eliminated – they couldn’t get round at all. It was a very difficult course, and my good training had got me into it; it was just in the first round I was nervous and the sun compromised my vision.

And I might as well tell this now, because it turned out that my horse had become blind in one eye. He’d picked up a virus called Periodic Ophthalmia. Technically it atrophied the muscles of accommodation of the eye, which meant in the sunlight instead of the pupil contracting it stayed open and the sunlight destroyed the retina. The reason I found this out was after the Olympic Games I sold Telebrae to Pat Smythe who was the queen of Show Jumping in the world; to’ve sold a horse to her was a real coup.

So after the Games I took the horse all the way back through Europe to Gloucestershire where Pat had her house. I unloaded him, said goodbye very regretfully, and Pat took him to the White City where she won the Puissance on him, which is a power jump; she jumped six foot three, a wall, and won the competition. I met Pat, and I noticed that instead of greeting us she shouted at us, “Did you know your horse is blind in one eye?” And I said, “No, hadn’t the faintest idea.” When you sell a horse that’s damaged it’s a terrible thing. Usually it starts a feud in Ireland if you sell a horse that’s going to go lame, or has a habit that … it bucks or bolts, or something bad. But anyway that was a big comedown, and all the celebrations of him doing so well in the Games was muted ‘cause the news had got out.

So while I was at White City I went to see Telebrae in his loose box – there was a row of loose boxes – and he started neighing; he’d spotted us before we saw him and he neighed a welcome to us. We had been so close for so long, just one horse; and to take a horse from New Zealand on a ship and travel with one horse and one groom … all the other competitors had a string of horses and they just took the one that was feeling the best that day, or scoring the best … but we had one. And he didn’t go lame, he was a marvellous animal and a real pet … used to follow us round without a lead.

And what breed was Telebrae?

He was a part Clydesdale, part thoroughbred. He was 16.2 hands, and he was an A Grade horse who had jumped in the Auckland area, owned by a lady who’d lent him to Coloman for the Games, ‘cause Coloman thought he was such a good horse and he just tried to find a rider – that’s why he picked me, because he thought I was wealthy and would be able to pay the way.

But I think I mentioned before the whole trip was made very special from a Kiwi point of view because I had absolutely no money. When I was invited to a CHIO Show I was put up at the best hotel in town and fed, and Coloman used to come with his wife and daughter in his car. John Howard would be given groom’s quarters in the stable. But we would go to the Show secretary and ask for the money which would be paid for the best hotel, in cash. And we would go to a pension and spread the cash to give everybody … It was done, and my uncle didn’t know about that but he would’ve thought that it was [a] very low thing to do; that you go as a representative and you pay your way, you don’t go crawling round the back looking for bargains.

What would the prize money be equivalent to today?

Not really very much. I won a big competition in Lausanne in Switzerland, and my prize was a little vellum bag of freshly minted Louis d’Or gold coins. And they were very valuable, and they were something you didn’t use, you left them to your grandchildren in your will. But I used them to buy petrol. I remember handing it over to get a tank of petrol, and the attendant coming out. He bit the coin and looked at it and rushed inside to show his boss, and the boss came rushing out to look at it – they thought we’d robbed a bank or something. But I didn’t know what the exchange rate was, it was probably enough to buy the whole truck, but I just had to go with what I got.

The old truck that we bought didn’t ever break down; there were a lot of blessings on the trip. I’ve got a photograph of one of our camps; we used to drive down the autobahn ‘til dark, pull over on the side of the road, put in four pegs with a rope around it and put Telebrae in there. organicAnd John and I would muck out his droppings, put our camp beds up in the truck and sleep in there, and then in the early morning we’d put a camp fire up and cook our breakfast and then go on and drive on … map read our way to the next show. It was an old cattle truck which we had converted which I paid £50 for, and Telebrae would put his head in the cab between John and me. John was a very clever guy, he was a mimic and a ventriloquist, and a cartoonist actually. He used to take Telebrae’s voice and it was always a three-way conversation; it was like ‘Mr Ed the Talking Horse’. Shows were always very upmarket and there were cocktail parties for the competitors and all the show organisers. And we’d be at a cocktail party drinking champagne from a long stemmed glass and in conversation with a group, and John’s horse voice would come through to give his view of what the topic was, and everybody would look round wondering where the sound came from. It was a silly little joke.

But we had lots of fun. When we left our Shows we had a doggy bag and we’d put food in it and I put a dipper of oats in Telebrae’s manger. And then we [took] an empty bag, and we went out; we virtually stole … we would call it borrowing … but this was something so when we left the Show we had enough feed for ourselves for the next two or three days ‘til the next Show.

The Shows were every week and they’re two or three day shows, so we patched up our living by stealing … borrowing; that’s why I didn’t write the book because it would have been very wounding for my uncle who’d retired from the Horse Society. He was trying to run the show properly and there was this nephew sneaking in and just facing the challenges as they came, and having this crazy Hungarian [Bulgarian] trainer who nobody liked.

How long were you in Italy for the Olympics?

I suppose about three months. I had a girlfriend in Bedfordshire and she came and picked us up off the ship. She had a small horse farm; she was called Pat Pharazyn, and she used to ride for the British Show Jumping team. John and I worked on the farm for our board. And I worked on a farm next door too, ‘cause it took six or seven weeks for the horse to get over the trip.

What was that journey like, travelling over sea?

Well all horses travel by sea – and animals and cattle – but on this particular occasion Telebrae was very quiet. We used to lead him out onto the deck for exercise, and we used to walk between all the steel winches and the masts and things, then had [did] a figure of 8 and then back into the box. He had bare feet of course, but everywhere he turned he started to make a mark in the teak deck. The captain, on one of his tours, noticed these marks and was very angry so I made Telebrae a set of sacking moccasins which would soften, like having slippers.

We got a free ride from the boat up to Bedfordshire, then we worked on the farm for the next few weeks. I had a few pounds in the bank; I bought the truck for £50 – it was a 1930, I think, Austin cattle truck – and we worked to make it into a caravan for John and me. Then when we’d been to several English Shows we went across the Channel with the truck and then started the campaign. We went to Holland, Germany [dog barks] …

What was the campaign like?

Well, we had a scheduled trip …

Itinerary?

… we had an itinerary, and we just had to turn up at a date; the Horse Society had booked us from New Zealand as official representatives. That all went well, we had some good wins and were up with the play, so the Horse Society eventually decided at a committee meeting that they would nominate us.

What about your journey home from the Olympics?

Well I came home on a ship as a passenger. I sold the horse for £5,000 which was quite a big price in those days. But I borrowed a bit for my fare to come home and the rest went to Mrs H G MacDonald who owned the horse. Then I came home and worked on the farm again.

How long were you working on the farm?

From 1960 to ’64. A group from the Horse Society had bought me another horse ‘cause I’d had the experience to go, and they decided then to send a team; they’d built up their finances and got the show on the road, ‘cause there’s a lot of affiliations with Horse Societies all round the world. And when a sport decides to be represented at the Olympics they’ve got to fill in a network of linkages and things like that, so Coloman was again appointed the official trainer which was what his idea was. And there were three young men from Gisborne and me, and we trained for about eight months, I suppose.

What were the age ranges of all you men?

I was twenty-seven at Rome and thirty-one at Tokyo. I also went on a [the] ship to help look after the horses, ‘cause I’d done it before and I had the experience then and that’s why they chose me, I think. But of the twelve teams that competed at Tokyo, only two went by sea – the Australians and the New Zealanders. The Australians had a lunging ring on deck so they managed to keep their horses flexible and fit; our horses just stood in the box for three, four weeks. We went up through the Pacific and we landed at Yokohama, and then we had an all night trip on a horse float and by that time the other team members had arrived by air. They met the ship, [and] we unloaded the horses at Yokohama. They were very smart in Olympic jackets and things, and I was still in my civvy gear. We unloaded the horses, and we drove from Yokohama to Tokyo all night – we were sleeping in the straw in the horse boxes on the truck.

We were the first team to arrive at Tokyo and when the back door went down we were met by a whole host of flashing cameras and journalists, ‘cause we were the first. Tokyo had been preparing for the Olympics for a long time and they remodelled the whole of Tokyo – Japan had – and they were so looking forward to it. The New Zealand Show Jumping team arrived very early ‘cause it was a long trip, we had a long time to get fit again. And we all got up with straw all over us, and we were in this barrage of cameras. And in the press [chuckle] here was the team – we looked like a bunch of swagmen. I remember they were all being interviewed … of course it was with broken English … and I was pulled over to the side by a female journalist. She asked me all about my life and what I was doing, and I said I was thirty-one and I came from a sheep farm in Hawke’s Bay … and I liked Japanese girls.

So you weren’t married?

I wasn’t married, I was a bachelor. This went into a women’s magazine. So we went to the Olympic Village, and we were in our nice rooms – we’d been working in the indoor ring getting our horses fit again; we’d come back and the postman would come with one letter for two of the members from their wives, and Charlie Matthews had a fiancée. And on my bed was put this huge box full of letters; I used to go through these and give them to the boys. [Chuckle] I opened one just to see what it was like, and the letter read, ‘Dear Mr White, my name is Sumiko. I have black hair, I have black eyes and I am four feet long’. [Chuckle] So I thought, ‘I’ll open [answer] that one’. [Chuckles] So I answered it, and I got on the phone … Sumiko was fourteen and she wanted a penpal – they all wanted penpals, not necessarily boyfriends. But the fact that I was thirty-one and a bachelor made me pretty eligible. The other guys all read the other letters and I had this one. And d’you know those letters kept going for two months after I got home to New Zealand. I went down to the local post office and there were still big boxes of letters, [chuckle] so that was a sparkling after-effect of being in an Olympic team.

Who were your team mates?

Graeme Hansen and his brother Bruce, and Charlie Matthews – he was the Reserve.

And how did you guys all go in the Tokyo Olympics?

Not very well. There were ten teams and I think we were ninth, but we completed the course. I had an accident in my first round. My father was there grooming for me, and I remember the horse events were held at [as] the very last event of the Show because the horses would wreck the ground. And I noticed that after each event a whole lot of little Japanese guys would come out with wheelbarrows and fill up where the horses had landed; the horse’s legs were going right into the ground and they were sinking in about two or three inches. I noticed with the shot put … the shot’d disappear … they had made a mistake in preparing the track and it was too soft, so after each competitor there was at least five minutes while they were filling up all the holes – lots of little barrows would come in.

I was in the collecting ring and I was called by the steward to come out. They’d put a coconut matting blanket right across the running track so the horses wouldn’t damage the running track; and when I got out there another steward said, “No, he’s not ready – turn round and go back”, so I turned the horse [a]round. I’d put in jumping studs … you screw them into the steel horseshoe for grip, and I’d put in extra long ones ‘cause I could see you needed a lot of grip. As the horse turned round the mat got caught in the studs and was winding around the horse’s legs, and he didn’t know what was happening of course. Suddenly lots of little Japanese came shouting in Japanese, and I drove them off with my whip – I said, I’d turn the horse round the other way. But he’d had a hell of a fright and he got very upset, and when he started the round he wasn’t very balanced or anything else; we had a bad mistake at the third fence and the horse put in a very short one ‘cause I’d asked him to take off too far; put in a short stride and leapt straight up into the air like a jack-in-the-box, and he threw me out of the saddle. As I came down, I came down crooked and the pommel hit me on that side and this leg pushed down, and it tore all my adductor muscles in my groin, which is a common mistake. That’s how riders get injured, when they land crooked. I was in agony, and the team doctor put a painkiller in my injured leg and put tight strapping right around it. I couldn’t get on the horse – my father lifted me up onto my horse, and I went out into that ring expecting to fall and make a mess of it because the horse had a big undercheck, and it was very hard to handle him. He used to land crooked over every fence; I had to straighten him. He was a wild sort of horse. But I went out there and there were eighty-three thousand people in the stand including the Emperor of Japan. I thought that he’d go like that and I’d fall off ‘cause I had no grip, but I just let the reins go loose and the horse started to go very well. And he had quite a good round, and I got round without falling off which was quite an achievement. So I managed to keep … because then there were only three in the team and when one is eliminated the whole team is eliminated … unless I was first to go I’d have eliminated the whole team, which wouldn’t have been popular.

So anyway, I seemed to have big trials in the Olympics; unusual things happened. I suppose I should tell this story … the Japanese do a lot of washing; they have steam baths and the communal big bath, heated pools and everywhere. [Everything] And I remember you were attended by Geisha girls, but I had torn my adductor muscle and I had a black strip going down the inside of my leg. It was from bleeding …

Bruising?

… and right over my ankle. And I remember going to a bath house and the girls thought I was [chuckle] very badly presented; I didn’t get much attention at all, and I remember they were saying, “What is the matter with you?” Broken English … and the Japanese word for horse is ‘uma’, so I said, “Uma, uma”, and they didn’t understand. And my father had come over to groom for me which was very nice. I had to have hydrotherapy after it.

Because I couldn’t sell my horse there, he was too big for the Japanese, they were small people and they had to have a ladder to climb up on him; so I took him over to Canada on another ship and I sold him in California eventually. But once again I was sort of ill-prepared; I owned this horse so I thought I’d sell him in Japan but I couldn’t. One of the New Zealand horses were sold to the Japanese, the other two went back to England.

What was your second horse’s name for Tokyo?

My second horse was called El Dorado.

And what breed was El Dorado?

El Dorado was … most show jumpers used to come off stations and they were cross-bred; usually a thoroughbred and usually a bit of heavy horse breed in them. It was an interesting story because New Zealand Show Jumping was called Round the Ring, where horses would gallop around a ring and be judged how they jumped the fences. And then my uncle introduced FEI jumping to New Zealand in 1952, and it was a big change and there was a lot of questions over what was the best type of horse to jump. Usually it required a quiet horse , [not] a nervous horse that bolted or was nervy; you wanted a quiet horse, quiet temperament, and a powerful horse to jump these bigger, wider fences.

Stations started breeding horses differently for show jumping, but a lot of horses came off the race track, they were slow race horses; thoroughbreds were very good if they were quiet. Thoroughbreds are usually pretty nervy. In England of course they were bred specially for show jumping, it’s such a huge sport. There was a German breed called the Hols … oh I forget the name of it, [Holsteiner] and they were big, very powerful horses but they took a lot of training. They were very heavy horses … lot of training to lighten them up. But show jumping now is usually standardised with horses bred specially for show jumping, but in those days when show jumping [began] in New Zealand everybody came in on all sorts of old hacks and race horses, and anything that had a bit of talent to jump. My first show jumpers my mother bought for me – they were off stations and they were hacks, but they had a skill with jumping, so to say what sort of breed they were is very pertinent.

After I finished my second Olympics I went back onto the farm when I was thirty-one, and then at thirty-four I got married and had Kate – she was my eldest. And I realised that I was still on shepherd’s wages and I hadn’t saved up any money at all, so I decided to go over to England, just on a commercial trip to take two horses and sell them, ‘cause New Zealand horses are very popular.

Why are they so popular?

Well, we are a good horse breeding … because the horses are bred on stations and the foals follow their mothers over hilly ground, they get very clever and athletic.

So what happened on your trip to England?

Well my trip to England – I’d bought a very big junior show jumper and he was bred in a strange way. There was a farmer up in Gisborne who had imported a Lippizaner, and Lippizaners are the dancing horses of Austria.

Kate: They’re from the Carmargue originally, aren’t they?

Adrian: Yes, I think they were

Kate: Provence …

Adrian: But they’re only about 14.3, and this guy imported them to breed hacks because they were very, very strong. They were small and nuggety, and Masai, the horse that I was taking to England, was bred from one of these stallions. But he was a quarter Lippizaner, a quarter Kingston, which is an American pacing horse, and a quarter Arab, and there were many Arab breeders for polo ponies. So he had this strange mix, but he grew to be 17.2, which is huge.

It is huge.

Very close coupled, and he was a magnificent looking horse – haven’t got a photograph of him up here unfortunately. And this ex-girlfriend of mine rang up and said, “If you’ve got any good show jumpers they’re selling like hot cakes in England”, so I thought, ‘I’ve got this horse – I’ll take him over and I’ll sell him for a big price and pay back all this money that I haven’t made because I’ve just been show jumping all the time’ … twenty years, I did of it. She said that there’d been a horse called Beau Supreme who was ridden by a friend of hers and he’d been sold to Belgium for £100,000, which in present day terms would be almost a million [dollars]. So I had my money-grabbing part of my character sharpened up, and I thought, ‘I’ll do this.’

So I took the horse – I again made two boxes – took the horse by ship; but this horse was too wild, he couldn’t be left out on deck. I took him to the same farm and I started campaigning him in England – I didn’t take him to Europe. My friend lined up some buyers; I had two horses there and I had two falls … two cracking great falls … one I fell and the whole fence came down on top of me, I had to climb out of the holes and things. And of course the buyers just walked out and [chuckle] I missed my opportunity.

So then I started a campaign to show him, and I was the first New Zealander to be invited to the Dublin Royal Show – Dublin is the biggest Show in the world, it goes for eight days. Ireland is one of the greatest horse and show jumping countries in the world – and hunting – and they have these great big banks and they hunt over them. The horses jump up on the banks and then off the other side. They had special competitions for this, and I remember coming to my first bank on this horse, and he said, ‘You must be joking!’ [Chuckle] The peg was like this … and he jumped at it like that, and he landed on top with his hind legs down one side and his front legs down the other side, and me with my boots hitting the ground, [chuckle] stuck there. [Chuckle] So I don’t know whether I got off or not, I can’t remember, but we scrambled out of it anyway. But we jumped the whole Show, and it was just before the Munich Olympic Games. The Italian Show Jumping team was jumping at Dublin for their last Show before Munich, and the last competition was a Puissance where the fences are put up and up and up, and in the end you just had two or three huge fences. The one who can climb over them and jump them clean wins. I got into the fourth round; the other three were the Italian Show Jumping team. And I noticed a new style of riding; they galloped into the fence and they shorted up like that, and they put in three short fences and shot up in the air and got up over these big heights. So I decided to [chuckle] … really late in the day to try this with Masai. And I stoked him up and I galloped in at … met a very long stride and over a six foot four [inch] fence; he put a short one in and then baulked, and I shot up over his head and landed sitting on the top of the fence, like Humpty Dumpty. I still had the reins, and Masai was down there somewhere and I was sitting on the fence; and I thought, ‘I’ve only had three faults.’ Normally when your feet touch the ground for [in] a fall that’s eight faults. ‘I’m still in it’, so I jumped on his back again, went back and had another go. But that time he said, “Oh, you’re mad; you’ve gone mad!” He just walked off; he wasn’t really a Puissance horse. The Italians went on jumping and they jumped up to seven feet that day, so I would’ve been well out of it anyway.

But my aunt had married an Irishman, and he was living in Southern Ireland in a caravan; he’d been an engineer working for the Indian government, and when he went to retire the Indian government wouldn’t let him take his savings out; so when he retired he got back to Ireland and he was living in a caravan with my aunt, and he had no money. She was down at the local pub watching this competition on the TV, and she’d say, “That’s my nephew, that my nephew!” [Chuckle] And then this terrible thing happened and she walked out. [Chuckle] They were all laughing their heads off – “What an idiot! Sitting on the top of the …” So that was my last competition in my life; I retired after that.

Why did you retire after that competition?

I had just had it really – I’d had all this time with horses, and I loved them to bits; I had a strong feeling for them but I wasn’t a fanatic. It was my mother who was the fanatic. I said to my mother once, “If I get to an Olympic Games, will you lay off me?” She said, “Don’t be silly, you’ll never do that.” But I did. And after I got back from Rome I walked into her room and I said, “Mum, I’ve done it. Will you lay off me?” She said, “Oh, I’ve just bought another horse for the next Olympics.” I thought, ‘Oh no [chuckle] … here we go!’ So then the worm had turned again so I flounced out of the house and I went to live at the end of the farm in an empty cottage … a shepherd’s cottage. My mother had hired the best horse trainer in New Zealand to get me onto this new horse she’d just bought, but that was an eventing horse so I had to learn dressage and cross-country and things. But she knocked on my door, and I said, “Go away.” And she knocked on the door again, “Come on, don’t be silly! Come out, come out, I’ve got Sue Basson here, she’s going to take you on.” And I said, “No. No – not touching it.” “Well, be it on your head then.” So she went back, and I stuck to my guns – I didn’t come home, I sweated it out in that cottage knowing I’d get hell as soon as I got home. But then my mother had sold Filase … the horse called Filase … and she’d sold him to the Australians and she did go to the Olympic Games in – what was that one? It was a European country anyway.

Was it Munich?

No, Munich had been. Oh, no it might’ve been Munich. [The 1968 Olympics were held in Mexico] No, Munich was a bit later ‘cause it was ’72 when I went to Dublin. That’s when I gave up; I still rode horses on the farm. I broke a horse in for Kate, and Kate show jumped up to Grade C. [Chuckles] Don’t you remember? The horse was called …

Kate: Orbit.

Adrian: Orbit, that’s right.

Kate: I don’t remember what grade I was at though, [chuckle] but I just went for the fun. I was never as competitive as some. [Chuckle] I won the Round the Ring Hunter Class once, but I was told later I’d won it but someone else actually nabbed the top prize. And everyone was grumbling because they shouldn’t have been in the Novice, they should have been in the Open because they’d won it last year. [Chuckle] I didn’t care. [Chuckle]

Adrian: No, you weren’t like my mother, competitively-minded. Oh, you were a bit … I remember you jumping very well, and you got up to Grade C, Then there was Grade A.

Kate: I just remember going for the jumping; I enjoyed the jumping, it was good fun.

Did all your children ride or was it just Kate?

Matt rode … hunted, he didn’t show jump much. He hunted on a little black pony I bought him called Sam, and he was riding in an event. Eventing is like [a] three-day event; they have a one-day event where they have dressage, cross country, then show jumping, and that’s called eventing. And New Zealand’s greatest eventer was Mark Todd who won two gold medals, I think. He became a professional horseman and race horse trainer. I didn’t go on, I just stopped. I was a bit naughty because Peter Holden, my cousin, he was in the first two teams from New Zealand in 1953 and 1955 jumping in the Sydney Royal Show; that was my first outing. So I’ve been four times overseas representing the country. Peter went on and he married young, and then he became an administrator. There’s a lot of jobs you can do and with all I’d taken out of the sport I should’ve done my time and been on committees and things … bit naughty, I just faded out. Every Olympic Games that comes round, there’s usually somebody knocks on the door and wants to hear my story.

I remember judging the ponies at the Pukehou School Pet Day, and there were two entries in the ponies and they were sisters; and I’d done it the year before and I put one first; [I thought], ‘Which one did I put first last year?’ I put the other one. Anyway, I was telling them a story because the Irish say that there’s a scroll in the horse’s forehead, and the positioning of that scroll determines the temperament of the horse – if it’s right between the eyes the horse is even tempered; if it’s up high it’s very flighty; if it’s down low it’s very phlegmatic. I remember trotting this story out to one of these little girls and she said, “You told us that last year, Mr White.” [Chuckles] “Right, okay, I’ll stop then.” [Chuckle] So that was my riding career, so it went to that level. [Chuckles]

Kate: Hold on – you performed as Father Christmas on your horse … [chuckles]

Adrian: Oh, that’s right – I was asked to do Father Christmas. And Father Christmas used to come on a wheelbarrow, or an express train, or in a helicopter or in a big car. The local school committee decided this year he‘ll be on horseback, so they rang me up ‘cause I was the most famous equestrian in Pukehou, and I had a showy grey hack. So I got dressed up in my Father Christmas gear and this showy hack, and big bag of presents over my shoulder, and I rode down the main street getting toots from the cars, because I looked quite a sight. I let myself into a gateway, and the school was in a paddock just down there … it’s the Paper Mulberry, it was. Anyway, so I kicked the horse in[to] a canter; I had a big white beard and that blew in the wind, and I thought, ‘I’m rather enjoying this’, you know. And I approached the fence, and all the kids saw me coming and they shot outside, screaming like anything. The horse got a huge fright and he half-reared and spun round, and I dropped the bag of presents. I lost my stirrups and I couldn’t grip, and the horse turned round and he bolted in the other direction, [chuckle] and I could just hear all these kids shouting abuse at me. [Laughter] And I managed to get him back – he was in a real bolt – yeah, I thought he was going to go through the end fence. I pulled him up eventually and came back and collected up the presents, and I tried to get my dignity but [of] course they’d forgotten about me; they were almost back at classes; but I walked in and ‘ho-ho-ho’d’, and put the kids on my knee. I was a bit shaky, I ‘ho-ho’d’ in a rather falsetto voice. [Chuckles] And then I sort of was getting through it all right, I’d given out almost the last present, and the last little girl on my knee was Melanie McLean; she lived in the house just down there. And she looked suspiciously up under my hood and she grabbed my beard and pulled it down [chuckle] and let it go with a thwack! And she said, “You’re not Father Christmas – you’re Mr White!” [Laughter] So that was the end of my … I said, “I’ll retire from this too, now.” [Chuckle] That was the last ride I’d had I think.

Kate: Did she grow up to be an investigative journalist? [Chuckle]

Adrian: So my career fizzled out. But I had this book planned; I’ve asked Kate to write it but she’s too busy … ‘cause Kate’s a writer as well. I can remember all these silly parts, but I can’t remember the detail and I’ve lost my 196… it might still be in there. It took me ages to get these photographs out …

Kate: I could have done it for you, Dad, I’m sorry.

Adrian: But it’s mostly horsey stuff. This one is very dear to me. See that rider? He’s got one arm. Now when I took Masai over – my wife came with my groom, and we left Kate with her grandmother and my brother – we went to his farm for [by] invitation; we stayed on his farm, and he was the most famous steeplechase rider; those are called point-to-points – heavyweight riders. And he was doing very well so he decided to turn professional, and he was going to his last meet as an amateur and he put his arm out to turn round, and another car came and took his arm off. When he woke up in the hospital just before they put him under he said “Will you please cancel my professional status?” ‘Cause he wouldn’t have been able to ride as a professional with one arm, but he rode as an amateur for twenty years and he offered Muff and me a job on his farm. He was a very nice man; he had two or three farms and he needed a manager for one or two of them. And Muff thought of ringing up and getting you sent over, but [chuckle] meanwhile you were being ordered about by your grandmother.

So who took the photos?

I don’t know where I got ‘em from, but I was going to give a speech at the Horse of the Year Show, illustrated.

Kate: Falwell would have had fun with those.

Adrian: Yeah, he would’ve. [Chuckles]

Kate: So Dad, could you maybe find some that are relevant to you and Hawke’s Bay? The illustrations are really good, but when people want to look it up they’ll be looking for the names of horses that they’ve heard of.

Thank you Adrian for that.